Do any of you cook with your kids? I wasn’t always keen on the idea. Even when thinking about it as a class. It was hard for me to let go and slow down long enough to even allow my children to help. For me, I just wanted to get it done and over with so I could move on and do the next thing. Pretty selfish hu? I was. Life was always busy, I just had the mindset to go, go, go!
When I finally got over myself, I realized I needed to lighten up and have fun. The thing is baking and cooking can be very educational and enjoyable. Education: You can teach fractions, measurements….timing. oh yes, the timing! *Ü* Enjoyable: It’s a fun way to hang out with your children and talk.
Oh, and I can’t forget… family recipes…. You can pass down traditions to your children and talk about where the recipe came from and how. My grandmother loved to cook and bake.
I have 2 recipes that I have from my grandmother for baking that are my favorite. Banana bread and molasses cookies. The banana bread was actually the first thing I ever taught my kids how to make. Shawn and Christian used to take turns per ingredient and would then argue who got to hold the mixer! RyLee being small at the time got to turn the handle on this little gadget I had to crush the nuts. That was always her job.
Now that they are older we have moved on from banana bread and cookies! Now we watch Food Network. One of our favorite shows for cooking is Good Eats with Alton Brown Its a science show about food. You would have to look through the listings, but the show offers a lot of great recipes and the why you do what you do for cooking and baking… there is a method to the madness. Its science but with food!
One of RyLee, my daughters favorite episodes of Good Eats was when he made homemade marshmallows! Yup! Marshmallows! This guy filled an entire episode on the how and the why of making marshmallows. Marshmallows!
When we began, we started off simple. Banana bread! Not just any banana bread, but great grama W’s banana bread! After banana bread, cookies….after cookies, muffins, then… you get the picture. RyLee probably loves to cook more than any of us! She jumps at the chance and has become very independent in her 11 years.
We are still working our way up to actual full meals like dinner, but they have breakfast, lunch and baking down to a science! They help more in the kitchen then they ever have.
Like I mentioned, Food Network is a great resource, but you can Google just about anything now a days! The internet is full of kid friendly recipes. If you are like us, I bet you might have a few family recipes you can pass down to your children, like my grama did to mine. Grama W is no longer with us, but her memory and wonderful recipes are.
Lisa from Koinonia Academy
Here is something my girl and I did together in the kitchen!
http://nikkit3.blogspot.com/2009/07/k-in-kitchen.html
I enjoy being in the kitchen with my kids:)
I also enjoy being alone from time to time also, and my kids are okay with that when I explain that’s what I need.
Nikki´s last blog ..Grapevine Studies ~ TOS Review
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Our kids love cooking too. Alton Brown is fantastic. I always what to know how, not just blindly follow a recipe.
My kids started out ripping lettuce for salad at 2 years old. I had this great unsharpened knife from pampered chef that they could saw apples, carrots and potatos with no danger of getting cut. Now at ages 16,11 and 8 they are all confident cooks.
Nancy´s last blog ..Homeschool Field Trips
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My children (all 7 of them!) love to cook and help in the kitchen. To avoid arguments they rotate weeks, each one is in charge of cooking or helping to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the whole week. My two oldest (12 & 13) are able to do everything themselves, including planning the menu and creating a grocery list that sticks to our budget, because of the training we’ve done as they have gotten older. I wrote a series of post about it:
Teaching Children to Cook: Part I – http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2009/04/teaching-kids-to-cook-part-i.html
Teaching Children to Cook: Part II – http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2009/04/teaching-kids-to-cook-part-ii.html
Teaching Children to Cook: Part III – http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2009/05/teaching-kids-to-cook-part-iii.html
Chocolate on my Cranium´s last blog ..Guelita in Photos
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I forgot to mention that Future Christian Homemakers has FREE homemaking lessons to download in pdf format. There are 12 lessons on cooking and then several more covering cleaning, laundry, and sewing. Great for BOYS and GIRlS.
http://www.futurechristianhomemakers.com/FCHLessonsIndex.html
Chocolate on my Cranium´s last blog ..Guelita in Photos
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I love to cook with my kids. My ds who is 12, is a wonder in the kitchen. He also loves to bake and is better at it then me. I love that he wants to learn and we have so much fun. We always make the recipes in the Story of The World series, he makes an awesome burrito, tacos, and chicken dishes. He will make some girl happy some day!!!
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